How to Advertise Your Site for Free

This article is for anyone and everyone. If you just started a newsite, this article will help you to gain members and get active. If youhave a large site opened for years already, then this article may helpyou to find new ways to advertise your site and get even bigger.Basically, if you wish to get your site bigger, then this article willhelp.

Do note that some of the techniques explored below may take time andpatience in not only doing them, but also before seeing any type ofgain in membership.

How to Get Started

The best websites on the internet may not be the biggest websites. Thatis because the owner did a bad job of advertising his site to thepublic and getting the name out. With the right type of advertising, awebsite could become huge in a matter of a year.

To start, be sure you entire site is finished. This means design,concept, forums, and plenty of articles. You need tons of articles ifyou want the advertising any good. All the advertising in the worldwon’t help you if you don’t have something for the people visiting toread or view. Be absolutely sure everything is perfect (in your opinionand in others) before starting your “advertising spree” (as I call it).

Below I will break each type of advertising in different sections tohelp you decide which parts to read and which to skip. Let’s getstarted shall we?

Search Engine Advertising and Optimization

This is by far the best thing you could possibly do to gain members.People search. This is a well known fact. Having your site searchableon the biggest search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN will proveto be the best thing you can possibly do.

However, search engine optimization is a huge topic that could takeyears of work to get its full potential. Rather than providing all ofthe information here, I will instead point you to various websites andprovide small tips to help you get started.

If you run vBulletin and want to optimize it, then the following thread written by T2DMan will help greatly: http://forum.time2dine.co.nz/showthread.php?t=98.Do note that the optimizations made currently only work for vBulletin3.0.X. I’m sure T2DMan will port over many of the optimizations tovBulletin 3.5 when he is ready.

Unfortunately, I currently don’t have any information on optimizingother boards. If you have information, please contact me and I willupdate this guide with whatever information I may find.

As far as websites go, optimizing custom sites will probably proveeasier than optimizing existing software. If you have a custom builtCMS or have nothing but HTML files written by yourself, things willprove to be easier than if you were to use an existing product. Why?Because you know how the code works, where to make adjustments andadditions, and how to do them.

A good guide to getting started is available at Google: http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/

Also, another guide exists on TAZ, available here: http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=2893

The first thing you can do is submit your site to all of the varioussearch engines. You could save this part for last until of the below isdone, but usually is takes a search engine spider a few days/weeks toget started on your site, so an early submission wouldn’t hurt, just besure to get as much of the below finished before the spiders startrolling in. I’ve found this sitethrough Google that will automatically submit your site to many majorsearch engines. However, I would recommend doing it manually just soyou know that it was submitted for sure. Go to each major searchengine, find their submission link, and add your site. For example,Google’s is located here.

Next up, choose a keyword for your website. A keyword is basically whata user will type into a search engine before your site comes up. Forexample, if you are running a Detroit Pistons website, then a wisekeyword to use would be Detroit Pistons or Pistons Basketball or evenDetroit Basketball. Making a Google search for Detroit Pistons bringsup NBA.com’s page for the Pistons as the first result. The secondresult is the Detroit News’ Pistons page. How did they do it?

First, if you’d look at the URL, they both have Pistons in the URL.That helps to get a higher rating. Next, the title of the site isDetroit Pistons. You can change the title by editing what’s in the

and Pistons hundreds of times throughout each page of their site. Themore you use it, the better. In fact, the more you link to it, thebetter. If you have links named Detroit Pistons, this helps even more.

Finally, both sites probably have hundreds of backlinks. A backlink iswhen someone else (another site) links to your site. If they do so withthe name Detroit Pistons than that will help even more. For example, ifyou ran a Detroit Pistons site and I linked to it, that will help youout when Google spiders my website. If I name the link Detroit Pistons(ie: Detroit Pistons), then it will help even more. According to Alex.com,the above site has 2,756 backlinks. That means over 2,700 sites havelinked to their site. This has probably helped tremendously in gettingit in the number 2 spot.

The next thing you can do is using mod_rewrite to optimize your URL’s.Search engines hate websites that don’t end with .html. They love URL’sthat are descriptive and to the point. Using mod_rewite, you can changeexisting URL’s to something more search engine friendly.

Check out these sites to help you with that:Apache’s mod_rewite tutorialSitepoint’s mod_write tutorialMod_rewrite cheat-sheet

Finally, another thing you can do is write your meta tags in your header to suit your keyword and what your site is about. This site may help with that.

There are plenty of other things you can do to help make your site more search engine friendly. A quick Google Search for “search engine optimization” yields tons of results, so have a look through and see what you can find.

Links, Signatures, and Affiliations

A great way of getting your name out is to link your site at as manyplaces as possible. If you visit a forum regularly, put a link to yoursite in your signature. If you post comments on blogs, put a link toyour site at the end of every comment. If you submit articles tovarious websites, link to your website within those articles or at theend of the article. Basically anywhere that you can get your name out,do so.

Once you have a base of users built up and posting, ask your users tolink to your site if they go to other forums and sites. This worksexceptionally well if some of your users have thousands of posts atother forums. Also ask them to make a thread or two in that forumsadvertising section to attract more users. Reward them too, so theyfeel good about doing it. Give them free points if you have a store atyour forum, offer them a position on staff, send them a free t-shirtwith your sites logo and url (even more free advertising), etc.

You could also do link exchanges and affiliations with other sites withsimilar content. For example, if you run a gaming site, ask for linkexchanges and affiliations with other gaming sites. This not only helpswith getting more backlinks (especially if that site has tons ofspiders visiting daily), but it also helps in getting your name outthere. The bigger the site, the more likely you will see a gain ofmembers. However, don’t overdue it. Don’t link to every gaming sitethere is as that will just discourage other sites from linking to you.When a user sees 500 links to 500 various gaming sites, what are thechanges he/she will click on yours? I would recommend not doing linkexchanges with anyone that overdoes it and be sure not to overdue ityourself.

Local Advertising

A good way to get your name out locally is by placing your logo andwhat-not at various places in the neighborhood geared at your audience.I know this article is for free advertising but I’m going to break thatrule slightly. If you have the funds, buy small cards with your sitename, logo, url, and a bit of information on it. Get as many as you canafford. If you run a movies site, for example, get the cards and go toyour nearest blockbusters and video stores. Place the cards near themovies section or inside the dvd/video boxes. So when someone rents amovie and opens the box, he’ll see your card inside and get interested.

You could also go to your nearest mall and put the cards on benches infront of stores dealing with your topic. Like if you run a clothingsite, put your cards in front of clothing store on benches where peoplesit or stand. That way, they’ll see the card and be interested.

Finally, you could have friends spread the cards at various collegesand high schools (if that is your audience). Like, for example, I willbe putting cards at the lunchroom where people wait in line to getfood. They will see my card, pick it up, and possibly pocket it tocheck it out in the future. I will also be putting a few on thelunchroom tables, in the various computer labs, and near anycomputer/programming classes (my site is a gaming site, so mostcomputer geeks play games, making them my audience).

In Conclusion

I hope I helped in giving you ideas for advertising and to get youstarted. Advertising is quite possibly the hardest thing to do for awebsite. Doing it right or wrong can make or break a site. Do note thatall of the above is just the beginning. There are plenty more thingsyou can do, so look out for a possible part 2 to this guide in thefuture with more ideas and updates to some of the above ideas.